White Hesperantha flower

The Late Show

Posted on by Ann Mackay

NB: A note for WordPress Reader users – you need to click on the title of the post again to come out of the reader and go to the post itself. This allows you to see the whole of the top photograph. (Otherwise you may see just a tiny section!)

By November there are few flowers left in the garden. The asters have almost all gone over now and many plants are beginning to die down for winter. Even so, there is a little colour left here and there. There are still the white ‘butterflies’ of the gaura flowers, which will continue to look good until a frost gets them. Also hanging on are some fuchsias, a couple of penstemons and the tiny daisies of Erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane).

Late October and November is the time when Hesperantha flowers here. The white one in these photographs is Hesperantha coccinea f. alba. It brings a beautiful freshness to the garden at a time when so much looks tired, and most foliage is turning yellow. (I have a red-flowered plant too, seen in this post.)

It brings great pleasure to see newly-opened flowers at this late stage of the year. Sometimes, however, there is disappointment if they don’t manage to flower before a frost arrives. Why the Hesperantha plants in my garden flower so late is a mystery to me. They’re said to flower from late summer, but it’s always well into autumn before we see any flowers here. Maybe the plants will flower earlier as they mature, or do they just prefer to flower in the cooler weather later on? In any case, I do love to have some flowers still around in November.

White Hesperantha flower and bud
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Published by Ann Mackay

Photographer, mixed-media art adventurer and completely daft about plants.......

27 thoughts on “The Late Show”

  1. What a pristine specimen. Never having heard of Hesperantha, I looked it up and found it’s in the iris family. As the name means ‘evening flower’, it seems appropriate that yours is flowering in the evening of the year, so to speak.

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    1. I don’t know what’s going on with that, because in the ‘Discussions Settings’ I have the ‘must be registered and logged in to comment’ switched off. So I’d have thought that that would apply to everyone, not just WP identities. How frustrating! Makes me wonder if there’s some other setting somewhere that is overriding it. Thanks for letting me know, Steve!

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  7. Weird, but like Steve if I go to your post to comment it is now asking for all kinds of details. So I am using the Reader to comment. I love your photos and I am now going to look up Hesperantha flowers. I have seen them in NT gardens locally so I assume they will grow in my garden. I still have fuchsias and penstemons in flower too!

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    1. That is strange, Jude, and I’ve come across it with other blogs too, so I usually comment in the reader. (Even though I may have also clicked through to the actual webpage.) I should think that Hesperantha plants will be very happy in your garden. They would prefer moister conditions than I have here in Suffolk, so I imagine that Cornwall will be better for them. Hope you give them a go!

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  8. When I read that this beauty is in the iris family, it occurred to me that might help to explain its late flowering. It looks remarkably like some of our iris family members — Herbertia lahue, Sisyrinchium spp., Nemastylis geminiflora — that are among our early bloomers. In fact, the blue-eyed grasses sometimes appear in January. Perhaps it’s the cooler weather that’s encouraging these. I’d be happy to have them appear in my garden at any time!

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    1. I think you’re right and that late summer is still a bit too warm for them here, so ours are delayed in flowering. (According to the information I’ve seen about these plants online, they do flower earlier elsewhere.)

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    1. I do have to remember not to let it get dried out if there’s a drought. (It survives bit doesn’t do at all well if that happens!) It is good to have some flowers still in the garden – there aren’t many now.

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  12. These photos of the white Hesperantha are exquisite! I love a good pure white and these are wonderful. I’ve seen the red and the pink, but I don’t recall ever seeing the white. Hesperantha grow pretty well hereabouts so sometime I’ll try and get some – including the white!

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